EARTHLINGS
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Movie Reviews of EARTHLINGS
Movie Review: Provocative, Educational, Inspirational
Summary: 5 Stars
It would be easy for a review to focus entirely on this documentary's visuals. For they are overwhelming. I suspect some persons even would scorn the documentary for "subjecting" us to these images, at least so many of them. But I think this would be misguided. For, with only a few exceptions, the documentary does not use its images in a way that's sensationalist. They merely document the conditions to which many animals are subjected. The problem, I think, is that we -- as a society -- actively avoid looking at any images documenting our treatment of unwanted pets, animals raised for meat, animals used for entertainment (e.g., circus), and animals used in experiments. Given this, Earthlings is simultaneously overwhelming and overdue. By itself, this is enough to recommend watching the film. However, the documentary is much more than this. Its creators obviously are attempting to provoke us to think. This is apparent within the first minute, as its prologue introduces its viewers to core moral principles that have defined the animal liberation movement. And it does this wonderfully. Its ability to articulate these principles clearly and concisely would make this film great supplemental material for any course covering its topics (I plan to show Earthlings in my community college applied ethics class when it examines Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation.") This prologue frames the film's visuals as they document our treatment of unwanted pets, animals raised for meat, animals used for entertainment, and animals used in experiments. It does this so well that rarely does a minute pass without the film challenging us to question some of the fundamental assumptions seemingly guiding our present treatment of these animals. This point is punctuated at the film's end, which challenges us to rethink our understanding of animals, our relationship to them, and our co-existence on earth. In the end, the film is provocative in the best sense I can image. It does not merely ask us to memorize its concepts. It beautifully immerses its philosophical content within its medium (Through the wonderful harmony of its visuals, Moby's subtly haunting music, and Joaquin Phoenix's minimalist, yet impassioned narration) in a way that challenges us to rethink how we live our lives. Many are likely to be disturbed by this challenge (As a life-long meat eater, I understand how difficult it can be to respond to this challenge). But it is doing nothing more or less than educating us! While the film is not perfect, and it does seem to be guilty of some pseudoscience -- especially with its seemingly hyperbolic denials of the knowledge acquired through vivisection -- those of us who are saddened by the educational opportunities missed each and every day on television and film are likely to find Earthlings an inspirational reminder of such media's educational capacities.Movie Review: horrifying
Summary: 5 Stars
Being pro-animal, I could not watch the entire movie. I only got about 15 minutes in (to the part where they threw a live dog bleeding profusely into the back of a garbage truck) and I had to turn it off as I was in tears. I couldn't make myself watch any more. How can the human race allow this kind of cruelty to happen? Humans as a species are nothing but selfish, savage animals that only use the other species for their own benefit with no care or concern about the pain they cause. Aren't we supposed to be the smartest species on the planet? How about acting like it and being more responsible? Was Hitler smart? Parden the Spider Man quote but "with great power comes great responsbility". Responsbility to care for species lower than us. If you can't fully care for a pet then don't get one. My animals are my life and I work a second job so I can afford to feed and care for them.
I know that the subject of this movie is "just the way it is" and there really isn't anything that can be done about it. Humans are stupid and rely on animals too heavily for food, so this will continue happening.
I really, really want to take a large brick and drop it on the head of the person that did that to the pig and see if HE feels any pain. If you need to kill an animal, kill it quickly. Don't make it suffer. If you have products that need to be tested, why not test them on the death row inmates filling our prisons? They're dead anyway, why not have them contribute to society somehow before they go?
The images in the movie will haunt me for a long time, and I only saw the first 15 minutes! I can't imagine what other horrors were left to be seen knowing what the rest of it was about. I'll will go home and hug my dog and horses tight tonight and thank God that I have them in my life and that I am a responsible pet owner.
Being in the horse world, I have heard of world champion horses ending up in a slaughterhouse. Thoroughbreds that earned their owners millions of dollars get shipped overseas for meat every year because their owners don't want to continue to care for them if they can't generate money. How pathetic!!!
BOTTOM LINE - RESPONSBILITY FOR HUMANS AND PET OWNERS/BREEDERS TO KEEP THE ANIMAL POPULATION IN CHECK SO WE DON'T HAVE TO EUTHANIZE/SLAUGHTER MILLIONS OF ANIMALS EVERY YEAR!!!!
Next time I go out to eat, I think I'll order pasta or a salad.
Movie Review: Painful to Watch
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is not rated for a reason. How could you possibly rate a movie like this? Image after image of tragic callous man-induced death unfolds on the screen. It is painful to watch, so painful that we had to watch it in small increments, so painful that I found myself closing my eyes to block out the images over and over again.
I am so pleased that I saw this film. Everyone should. I mean, we all know (for example) that 25 million unwanted pets are killed each year. But until I saw Earthlings, I had never seen an animal put to sleep (a euphemism that should be permanently banned). It does something to your soul, watching a beautiful dog being caressed while injected and dying within seconds in the arms of a human it trusts. And then watching the next one. And the next. And the next... And then watching the carcasses being tossed into a pickup truck.
The film lays out man's inhumanity to animals in a very matter-of-fact way. Nothing is sensationalized. The viewer is merely witnessing the way things are done. This makes the callousness with which the animals are treated in the food industry segment all the more disturbing. The dehumanization that has taken place in the men who treat the animals with such callous indifference is secondary to the animals' suffering, but it still gives you pause. How have we managed to come so far? How is it that humanity has become so inhumane?
I am already a vegetarian. After watching this film, veganism is my next step. And being a whole lot more proactive in my views on animal rights. PETA, here I come.
Movie Review: making the connection is the best thing to do
Summary: 5 Stars
I never watched any footage of the meat industry knowing full well that if I did I would not be able to stomach it ever again. Once I came to be vegetarian I watched this only to be forever shocked and horrified. I could not watch it in one sitting, I got a little sick and had to turn it off. I had nightmares about the images and cried when I eventually finished it. It made me very nauseated, terribly upset and painfully mad about how much the public is lied to in thinking the food industry is looking out for them. This movie will change you, the images will haunt you for days. As painful as it was to watch, it changed me for the better, it made me have passion for animal rights and encouraging vegetarianism. Hopefully more people will see this and change their lives too. Its not just about meat or food, it shows all aspects of animal abuse and perverse commodity. People need to evolve and realize the way we do things is wrong, a far cry from moral and honest. I have never been more ashamed at what animals go through on the account of humans and our selfish, greedy behavior that allows the most grotesque torture to take place by our own hands. There is no need of mine on this earth to justify taking an animals life, its as absolutely simple as that. The truth is not pretty, make yourself aware and decide your own opinion. If you have any connection to a pet or any animals for that matter, it will make you more of a raging animal activist than you ever thought possible. This movie is definitely powerful and undeniably necessary, be prepared.Movie Review: I will never be the same......
Summary: 5 Stars
Like most people I walked through life knowing I was turning a blind eye to animal testing,animal consumption, and the like... taking my kids to the circus and feeling very guilty for it. I am the Father of 4, after viewing this movie my wife and I immediately became vegan, that was 7 months ago.. We regret nothing.
There are 2 quotes from the movie that spoke to me, the later is taken from a Harry Beston novel.
"Every animal is the psychological center of a life that is uniquely their own."
"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, Man and civilization survey the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees their by a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.
We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far beneath ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complex than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."-Harry Beston 1888~1968
What we do to animals is wrong, most of us just wont say it out loud.